beavis1729

Correct. Thank you for confirming via yet another data point how horrible our climo is - mission accomplished.

Bring it on - then of course I would drive everyone crazy and they’ll ban me.

Maybe it's the +AMO cycle (which should be ending soon after nearly 30 years), and lack of +PNA. We need the "blob" (warm water by Alaska) to appear again, like in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

Thanks for digging up the numbers...and the RFD observing site hasn't changed locations materially (as far as I'm aware). So, in the old days, either RFD observers simply reported snowfall totals based on the depth after settling/compaction (resulting in lower snowfall totals vs. today's measuring guidelines)...or RFD's snow climo is incredibly horrendous and this is one of the most shocking data points I've ever seen on this board. If it's the latter, then I really don't know what to say. It would be one more in an extremely long list of data points which shows how horrible winter climo is in N IL. How can RFD only average 22.8" of snow over a 30-year period?? Hell, even one year of 22.8" is unacceptable. If this is really true and we're eventually going to regress to the mean, then there's no point in hoping for sustained winter in these parts. And I thought 40" per season was bad...

Possibly for some lake enhanced events…but, overall, I think downtown (either due to melting on contact due to the urban jungle or marine influence early in the season) has materially less snow than ORD throughout the historical record. And I know many of us are on a short fuse these days. Look at the AmWx forum overall, it’s a disaster. Boston, NYC, PHL, and DC have had zero snow all season. I know that’s not unprecedented in DC…but this is getting pretty ridiculous for all locations east of the Mississippi and south of 45N. Sure, Buffalo and Watertown are exceptions…but their rapid melting following two large events is sad in its own way.

I clearly said that "I'm not suggesting that today's measurements are purposely overinflated". I'm just saying it was different 50-100 years ago. Why is that so controversial? People use stats in misleading ways all the time, whether intentionally or not. Measurements of average Chicago snowfall over the years have been distorted by changes in measuring techniques (probably didn't used to measure every 6 hours or be extremely precise on minor dustings) and changes in location...which suggests that the low-snowfall winters in the early-mid 20th century would have probably had higher totals if they were measured at ORD and using today's measuring techniques. It's not a difficult concept or thought process, and it's not intended to personally insult anyone. It's simply something for people to keep in mind when throwing numbers around.

To add some non-DC area perspective, if helpful: Chicago and Milwaukee have also not really had a winter so far. Chicago's greatest depth has been 1", and only for a few days during the brief pre-Christmas arctic outbreak. Milwaukee has been similar, even as their depth hit 2" briefly. Both have had essentially no snow since Christmas. NYC and Boston haven't had any snow at all. East of the Rockies and south of 45N, it has been absolutely horrendous...with no discernable end in sight.

While I’m not suggesting that today’s snow measurements are purposely overinflated, I highly suspect that an “event” like this 50+ years ago would have gone down in the books as a T. What I’m getting at is that the general increase in 30-year normal snow over the decades that you and Josh noted in the other thread is probably not a true increase at all. It’s driven by changes in measuring techniques. And, for Chicago in particular, the first half (at least) of our period of record was in downtown Chicago. In other words, the increase in 30-year snowfall over the decades is driven in part by the change in the official site location. UHI trends are one thing…but it’s hard to compare apples to apples when the observing site moves over time.

Yeah...which is just one more item to add to the mounting pile of evidence that illustrates how bad our climo is. I think it just seems worse this year because of the compounding effect of crappy Decembers over and over again for the past several years. We've had essentially no snow cover so far this season. Sure, we had 1" on the ground for a few days before Christmas...but is the bar really that low now? I'm thinking back to December 2000. Yes, I admit that was a good month for snow and cold...but, honestly, that's more like what winter should be. Not saying I expect every December to be like 2000...but they should be closer to 2000 than the crap we've endured recently. The problem with our climo is that, whenever we get a decent winter month, you know you'll probably not see it again for a very long time. Good (not necessarily great) months need to be more common. P.S. I refuse to admit or accept that Chicago's average December snowfall is less than 10". No matter what the stats say, I'm going with 10"...which is bad enough already. Every decade when the 30-year normals are updated, the average annual snowfall goes down. It used to be over 40", now it's down to 37" (?).

It sure hasn’t felt like ORD has had 4.5” of snow…it has been mostly dustings with the depth no greater than 1” all winter so far. I would have guessed 2-3”. If this is truly just a “run of the mill” below average snowfall December, that’s incredibly sad. It has felt like the worst December ever, outside of the tiny 5 day period from Dec 21-25 (and even that period wasn’t great, as there wasn’t much snow). The most important and all-encompassing metric for the quality of a winter is snow depth days (SDDs). That has been abysmal so far at ORD. Our climo SDDs are bad enough, but we are probably close to an all time record low through mid-January. I know it probably takes some effort to come up with the SDD data by year.

Yep - nice catch.

Point taken, and I agree…but this is exactly why I get so frustrated with our winter climo. Even if the average high is around 30 in January, we have so much variability around the average…which means that high temps of 40+ occur way too often for my liking. You really need average highs of 25 or colder in the winter season (not just January) in order to have a wintry climate, since you can absorb the thaws more easily while still preserving ice cover on the lakes and snow cover. Basically, Wausau WI and north…where (coincidentally) the “north woods” and black spruce trees begin.

Ha ha. It’s an emotional thing, not a logical equivalence. If you walk to a park on a summer day, what do you notice? Probably the fully leafed out trees, with the leaves swaying in the breeze. If you walk to a park in the winter (channeling Currier and Ives), do you think “oh great, the trees aren’t in bloom”? No - you imagine the picture postcard of snow on the ground. That’s the difference.

Why is it that, on a weather forum in a winter thread during the heart of winter, no one seems to care about the lack of wintry weather? Should we just post about whether it’s cloudy and 40 or sunny and 45? Does anyone else lament our lack of winter besides me?? What am I missing? Do people think it’s ok to have days on end of bare ground in the middle of winter? To each their own I guess…but then why post in a winter thread and annoy those who, heaven forbid, would like to enjoy this season for 3 months out of 12?

Maybe a bit…and it would be probably more accurate to say June 10th - September 10th due to the colder lake in the spring. But even on the fairly rare July day with a high temp cooler than 75F, it’s probably humid…which still makes it feel like summer. And the trees are obviously in full bloom…which to me is equivalent to having snow cover during winter. Even if you use a threshold of “85% of days feeling like summer”, we pretty much hit that every year…but it’s rare where we have 85% of days with snow cover in winter. Only 1978-79 comes to mind.

We've had no more than 1" of snow on the ground here all winter. Maybe your location has had a bit more...but probably not enough to make a difference. I'm guessing you have no snow on the ground now, right? If so, then the 15-16 days of flakes in the air with little if any accumulation on each of those days doesn't really mean much. Flakes in the air are festive when there's already a foot of snow on the ground...but when the ground is bare, it doesn't really matter. In winter, days should be in the 20s and nights should be 5-15 degrees...and there should be snow on the ground. Not saying blizzards and sub-zero temps need to occur all the time...but when you look outside the window, it should look like winter. Very simple, and not too much to ask. And when you go outside, it should be cold. The warmest days should be in the 30s; day after day of 30s and 40s isn't winter. Just asking for seasons in seasons. In JJA, it feels and looks like summer. In DJF, it should feel and look like winter.

This is comical. 30-40 years ago, Dec. 2022's average temp of 29.1F would have generated a departure of roughly +2 to +3...as ORD's normals have gone up significantly over the past generation. This was not a cold December. 23 days had highs of 30F+, and 14 days had highs of 40F+. That is not even close to being wintry...yet somehow it's a below normal month??? Just ridiculous in so many ways; this is Exhbiit A (among hundreds of other examples) of how bad our winter climo is. December has the shortest days of the year, yet almost half the days in Dec. 2022 were in the 40s or warmer. Besides the 3-4 cold days around Christmas, the rest of the month was a torch. I actually agree with cromartie on this one...probably for the first (and only) time in history.

I hope you're being sarcastic. Normal lows are around 10 in Madison...so you can have frost even with a +10 to +20 departure. A January day with a low temp of 20 in Madison is considered a torch.

Your data from earlier years was downtown Chicago, which used to be the official reporting location…which of course is warmer than ORD in January due to lake/UHI. It’s not an apples to apples comparison. So, maybe the 1960s-80s were a bit cooler than other decades in Chicago, but not nearly as much as your numbers above might suggest. I know for a fact that Chicago normals in January were 29/13 when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. When I was going to NIU in DeKalb (65 miles west of Chicago) in the 90s, their January normals were even colder…something like 27/9…which is close to or even a bit colder than Madison’s current January normals (!). Even if your point is somewhat correct, that would actually be even more depressing…as our current January normals would be expected to continue (or get even worse) going forward. For my own winter sanity, I refuse to accept that. I grew up with January normals of 29/13, so anything warmer is a disappointment. We can barely hold any cold in Dec and Feb these days (normal highs are in the low 40s on Dec 1 and Feb 28)…so it’s tragic to lose January too. I wasn’t comparing Chicago to the mid-Atlantic…I was only sharing a post from that forum that seems to capture the zeitgeist of the crappy winters that pretty much every location south of 45N and east of the Mississippi has had since 2014-15. And I’m talking snow depth days and the consistent feel of winter, not just snowfall amounts or some occasional wintry periods (which tell a very incomplete story). Either way, 38” is pathetic for an annual snowfall average. It just is. Where are the clippers? Where are the minor-moderate snow events? Where is the cold other than 5 days in December? 5 cold days out of 40 in met winter so far isn’t what I would call winter. My definition of a wintry day is a day with a max temp of 32 or colder AND 2”+ of snow cover. I use 2” as the threshold because a T-1” depth usually means some bare spots in exposed areas…which is unacceptable. So far this winter, Chicago has had…you guessed it…zero wintry days. Score yet another victory for the fooking general public and media.

Just going off memory/estimates... I believe the Chicago January normals for 1951-1980 were 29/13, vs. 32/20 for 1991-2020. I'm guessing the extreme increase in overnight low temps (up 7F in 40 years) is due to UHI and much less snow cover. Further north, snow cover always exists in January, so normal lows don't change much over time even with climate change occurring in the background. But in Chicago, January temps are extremely sensitive due to a highly variable element from year to year (snow cover). So, with a higher frequency of low-snow Januaries recently, plus UHI and climate change added in the background, average low temps increase significantly. It's shocking to me how no one is talking about this. All of this has happened in just 40 years - a mere speck in time in the grand scheme of things. This is what drives me crazy about winters here - we're always living on the edge and nothing is certain. We should be debating how much snow is on the ground this time of year; it shouldn't be a yes/no question. Ideally, an average run-of-the-mill winter should have 8-12" of snow cover now, simply due to the calendar and nothing more. Bad winters should still have 4-6", and good winters should have 15"+.

I fully realize that I may be grasping for straws in saying something bad about your winter climo. But it’s pretty sad that you have less than 30” of snow on the ground in the depth of winter, especially when you’ve had 115” of actual snowfall. Even your area has had too many thaws...it’s just ridiculous. It’s like everything is going wrong this year, outside of the MSP snow magnet. Even New England and the east coast has basically had zero snowfall this season. No one can escape the misery.

The 30-year normal for January at ORD is now 26F. Using 1951-1980 normals, it was 21F. So, Januarys in Chicago are 5F warmer at ORD than it was 40 years ago!! That would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Even worse, no one in the scientific community or general public seems to care. People can debate that it’s only a timing issue I.e., the 60s and 70s were relatively cooler decades), or some UHI…but those are the facts. Our winter climo has always had very little margin for error, so this type of warming just kills things. Here is a recent comment from a respected poster in the MA forum. Obviously it’s not our area, but the thought process is still similar and valid for us: ————— Something vexes me. Over this now 7 year run of futility the one constant has been the problem a strong pacific jet has caused. But that’s now been a constant for 7 years through 4 Nina’s, 2 neutral and 1 Nino. And we’ve seen it cause the same problem in opposite pac longwave patterns. If we have a Nina like ridge the screaming jet goes over the top and digs a trough to Mexico on the west coast pumping a huge SE ridge infused with pac puke. If we have a Nino like trough the jet goes under and blasts sub tropical pac puke straight across the whole continent. The issue is according to research I’ve seen referenced the enhanced jet isn’t related to enso it’s a result of the expanding Hadley cell and might be permanent. If so…what are we even looking for? We’re failing in opposite ways because of the same underlying problem and I don’t see that going away no matter what longwave configuration we get. I mean ya once in a blue moon we will luck into the super rare full latitude epo pna ridge combo but the other 90% of the time what’s the answer?

As bad (good) as those stats are for ORD (MSP), seasonal snowfall totals usually make things look better than they actually are...especially down here in the tropics. Nothing against anyone in particular, but I wish people would stop focusing on seasonal snowfall amounts. Buffalo is a perfect example. They've had 100+ inches of snow this season, but essentially zero snow cover right now. Even I would admit they've had a decent winter so far...but I would be furious if I lived there, seeing so much snow melt twice in the past 6 weeks. You'd think Watertown would be saved from the melting, being further north than Buffalo...but not really. No one is exempt from melting these days (no pun intended). The main takeaway is that ORD hasn't had more than 1" of snow on the ground all winter, and MKE hasn't had more than 2". And even then, the # of days with even this paltry amount of snow cover has been minimal. All of this will probably remain true through January 10th and possibly beyond. I was just in central WI (near Waupaca) for New Years, and they barely have any snow on the ground...and it was near 40F there yesterday. This is all ridiculous and unacceptable. Last I checked, we don't live in Atlanta.

I hope you all don’t mind the perspective of an outsider…but part of the frustration (even up here in N IL) is that, if you don’t get the cold and snow to produce when the pattern is “good”, then you have to suffer through the other times. It would be nice if you didn’t need a million things to go right to actually have wintry weather in winter. In other words, it should be wintry simply because the calendar says it’s winter. Even up here, it will be in the 40s and 50s later this week…and we only got 1-2” of snow over the past couple of weeks. So, all of that effort of the decent pattern will be wasted, as the little bit of snow we did get ends up melting over the next few days. For snow lovers, you just want winter to be winter. The problem is that our non-good patterns aren’t wintry at all. I like to say “we don’t have winter; we only have wintry periods”. Even in the depth of winter (January), our average high is 32…meaning that some snow (if there even is any on the ground) melts on half the days. And it’s even worse in Dec and Feb. To me, that’s not winter. In order to live in a climate that truly has a winter season, you need 80%+ of the days in DJF to be “wintry”…which I define as a high temp of 32 or colder AND at least 2” of snow cover. We never come close to that 80% number here, because there are too many thaws. Our best winters like 1978-79 and 2013-14 are probably around 60-70%. The ironic thing is that, if you drive 200 miles due north of here into central WI, it changes dramatically…as average DJF temps are 5-10F colder (driven by colder nights due to snow cover and no UHI) with about 25% more snowfall. There’s a very large Midwest winter gradient. In JJA, the weather often feels like summer…like it should. I just want winter to feel like winter, and not have to worry about the snow melting. Seasons in seasons. Forgive my rant, and carry on. I love the discussion in this forum, so I hope you don’t mind my brief venting. Yes - we winter lovers often have unrealistic expectations.

No, the Bengals cold game was January 1982. One of the coldest months on record for much of the eastern US. That’s when Minneapolis had two huge back to back snowstorms. This month often gets forgotten compared to December 1983, 1989, 2000.